Sleepless Nights
by silverfox09
Summary: Sheena has been having difficulty sleeping and instead, spends her nights contemplating... Rated T, just to be safe.


I wrote this kind of on a weird idea I had a couple of weeks ago... Not kind of sure where it came from, but I decided to start at midnight, so I apologize if the grammar is a little rough... Let's bring Sheelos back guys. The entire community has kind of died out, and that's something that can be changed. Here's a challenge for all of the Sheelos writers who are still reading these; write something this month!

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After several long, cumbersome minutes of careful consideration, Sheena wholly decided that hatred wasn't a strong enough word to describe the emotion she constantly felt towards Zelos Wilder. In fact, the more time she spent pondering the idea, utter malevolence seemed too calm and weak of a notion. With little option left, she mentally chose to depict their relationship as one of pure abhorrence.

She impatiently sat up in her bed, completely unable to drift of into sleep, especially with the new wave of thoughts that had been drifiting through her mind all day. Much to her dismay however, Sheena was beginning to perceive an undeniable pattern to her late nights of thought-provoking rumination, and was becoming increasingly surprised at how easily such nights were initiated. Although she had figured that a restful period of recuperation had been order after the Regeneration Journey, she couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by the ardent temper she had developed and the conflicting emotions that constantly fought for rein within her mind.

With all of her heart and soul, Sheena ardently despised the red-haired chosen. She hated his flirtatious hobbies and loathed the lewd comments he had said to her on numerous occasions. She couldn't stand his wandering cerulean eyes, and how unclean they made her feel when he looked at her with mock concern. Every moment he had uttered the slightest word, she had an inexorable instinct to unmercifully punch him in the face. There was nothing he could say or do to defend himself from this harsh criticism; after the group had disbanded, she had spent too many silent nights in Mizuho doing nothing but vengefully thinking and remembering to rid himself of that judgement. He had a dirty habit of being a philanderer, and for that, she abhorred him to a point that was undoubtedly unhealthy.

In the past few weeks, bitter contempt had affected her relations within the village as much as the little sleep she was receiving at night affected her attitude. Although she rarely allowed physical circumstances to hinder her performance, endless, sleepless, nights had left her desperately exhausted. All of the villagers had begun to take notice, and their harsh reviews and comments were not unheard. What had began as a short stay to recover something she had lost throughout her travels was going to quickly transform into a much shorter stay than she had intended.

A slight wind drifted through the window, stirring the warm air that had settled itself into the stuffy room of which she was trying to sleep. A patch of moonlight idly illuminated a small portion of her floor, and she knew the stars outside were probably beautiful, opaquely glittering in the silver-strewn sky in an ideal summer night in Mizuho. She heard the breeze gently play with the leaves on the trees surrounding the village, and she felt the silent calm that was always engendered by the darkened scenery and the stillness of the late hours. With a melancholy sigh, she realized she had been awake for too many of these typical nights, and was beginning to critically analyze them instead of appreciate their beauty.

A sickening feeling began to overwhelm her as she let her thoughts wander. Her seething hatred had returned, and with little resources, especially in the dead of night, she found it nearly impossible to quell such torrents of anger. Besides the simplistic fact that his insincerity was something that was personfied as an immense evil within her society, it was a quality of his she absolutely hated. Taking a deep breath, Sheena attempted to calm her frayed nerves. Getting upset was definately not going to aid her in falling asleep, no matter how good it felt to blame Zelos for everything that was wrong with his personality.

As far back as she could remember, there had been the occasional moment when he had said something worth listening to- something that piqued her interest and struck her as an intelligent comment that wasn't directed at her body. These comments however, were often followed by hours of disappointment, and in such a manner, Sheena had effectively learned that the red-haired chosen had very few problems in accepting the morality issues with being deceitful.

She could pressingly recall three, ridiculously hope-crushing times in which Zelos had let her down. The first was a statement that he had quietly uttered to her one day when they had been alone, slightly distanced from the group for whatever reason had occurred and had placed them in that situation. At the time, she had not desired to talk to him, for she had undoubtedly been wrapped in her own thoughts and concerns. He had awkwardly initiated some sort of conversation, and in a mere matter of minutes, she was explaining her anxiety and fears of relocating Mizuho when the two worlds were united. She acutely remembered the surprise that had spread through her when he had offered to help with the moving process. Six weeks later, she had still received no word from him about such activities, and held it against him.

The second occasion had been, in all reality, quite silly. The Regeneration group had decided to spend the night in Altamaira, despite her vehement arguments that the city was nothing but an infectuous tourist trap designed to rob innocent people of their entire bank accounts, decency, and good morals. While they had been checking in at the hotel, looking as haggard and weary as they had ever been and undoubtedly attracting attention, Zelos leaned over and asked if she wanted to go out that night, promising that getting out and doing something social would allow her to feel better. Thinking back, Sheena realized she must have been more exhausted than she had imagined at the time, for she had doggedly agreed, and the two of them, along with Regal and Raine, had wasted an entire evening in one of Altamaira's finest casinos drinking alcohol. When she had finally stumbled into her room with Raine hours later, she instantly crawled into bed, her head swimming with so many thoughts she could barely think. Throughout the entire next day, she angrily cursed everything, especially Zelos, because her pounding headache was the exact opposite affect of what the ignorant Chosen had told her.

The third instance still haunted her almost every night, even when she managed to squeeze in a few meager hours of sleep. On the night before the group had disembarked to head into the Tower of Salvation, Zelos Wilder had promised her, in the silence of Flanoir and its dreadfully cold weather, that she could trust him. As he had spoken those words, Sheena distinctly remembered staring out the frosted pane of the hotel room and watching the snow idly plummet to the ground, as well as the shock that had come from such a strong oath. The next day however, had transformed into one of absolute misery; Zelos betrayed her trust, again, she fell down an endless abyss, was saved by the same man who had hurt her earlier, and fought in one of the toughest battles she could ever recall. She remembered the utter feeling of despair that had crossed her mind as he confessed his facade, then the brutally ugly anger that flowed through her. Even after he had apologized hours later, she still had been angry beyond words.

With no other realistic explanation, Sheena ardently blamed her current insomnia-related tendencies on Zelos as well. Who better to place the entirety of her problems that were a result of no sleep than the one man who she despised more than anyone else in the world? In her mind, there was no better target of her undefined and unrestricted anger. He had hurt her in so many different ways, and so many times that she figured if she ever saw him again, she would probably slap out of pure instinct before a single phrase was even uttered between them. He had taken her feelings and neglected them, challenged her opinions and beliefs, and destroyed her trust in too many situations to count. There couldn't possibly be anyone in all of the unified world that could sadistically subject her to so many painful hours of reflection as he did.

There was another memory she remembered quite vividly however, one that clearly contradicted her pure abhorrence towards the red-headed Chosen. The night Corrine had selflessly sacrificed himself, Zelos had mentioned something to her in passing, something so incredibly comforting, she had been dubious that it had came from his pig-headed mouth. He had grabbed her shoulder from behind, forcing her to turn around and face him, instead of averting gazes like she had previously been doing all day. Everyone had been attempting to cradle her through the loss, yet he simply told her that Corrine's death had been one engendered by his love for Sheena and his determination to save the two worlds that had been vying on each other. For some undefinable reason, she had found the comment comforting.

Sighing, Sheena stood up and quietly stretched her limbs as she walked into the kitchen of her small house and filled herself a glass of water. Over the past few weeks, she had attempted nearly every method of falling asleep, and had occasionally dabbled in the old wives' tales past down through generations within the village. Drinking tea, warm milk, or any liquid in general had proved to be ineffective, while going for a long run or practicing combat an hour before bed had yielded fruitless results. Reading books had done little besides leave her with a residual headache that lasted for the entire day. Once, she had mixed together an unusual concotion of natural plants found in the forest that she had discovered one evening in a book of home-made remedies. The substance had tasted utterly dreadful, and the effort proved to be a waste; that night, instead of the usual lack of tiredness, she also suffered from a wretching stomach ache.

She desperately longed to sleep again, but she also realized that the idea was improbable until she settled her malicious anger and hatred towards the red-haired Chosen. Some nights, she had irrationally considered taking a rheaird and flying to his mansion in the middle of the night. There, she would undoubtedly slap him right across the face and yell at him, explaining that he had undeniably ruined a good six weeks of her life, if not more. Everytime she thought of this idea however, something restrained her from actually carrying out this sure-fire plan to rid her of her sleeping troubles.

At three-thirty seven in the morning, sitting in her kitchen with her feet on her table, Sheena suddenly began to realize what had bothered her about their entire relationship. There had always been some sort of physical attraction to the man, whether it be his hair or his clear eyes, but she had always been so repulsed by everything else about him, even when he was being honest with her or attempting to console her in some way or another. She was always the first to throw criticism at him, and she couldn't recall a moment when she didn't expect some lewd comment about her figure, or some awkward groping incident. She had always considered herself an independent person, never too reliant on any single individual. This thought had brought her to her sudden epiphany; she cared about Zelos Wilder, very, very much.

In a last defense to force herself from getting involved with anyone else, she inadvertantly placed so many barriers around her that had eventually been broken down, in one way or another, by Zelos. When that was all said and done, the only emotion left for her to cling onto was pure abhorrence, a blindingly simple hatred of the one man who understood everything about her so easily. He always knew when she was upset, always understood her lonliness and the isolation she suffered growing up in Mizuho, always comprehended that she wasn't as tough as she pretended to be, and never revealed her few moments of weakness to the others, especially when she had personally sought him out to confide her troubles. She certainly didn't regret hitting him for all of the perveted statements he made towards her however, she couldn't imagine living in a world without him. She had hid behind hatred to protect herself, yet when she got to the bottom of the matter, the anger was never about hating him; it was just an excuse to think about him every moment.

The undeniably inexorable truth was that after six weeks in Mizuho, she missed him so much that it hurt.

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